My Childhood: A Short Film

During the last week of July I visited my childhood city. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan is a city of about 250,000 people situated smack in the middle of Canada’s prairie provinces. I lived there until I was ten years old, my days consisting of harsh winters, big skies, dinner at my grandparents’ home, and trips to the lake each summer. Although by the time I’m 80 I will have only lived a very small portion of my entire life in Saskatoon, the city doesn’t just feel like my childhood home. Instead, it feels synonymous with growing up and being a kid in every way imaginable.

We stayed in my grandparents’ home for a week. The longer we were there, the more at odds I began to feel. While it was nice to look back at the places where my childhood memories took place, I also felt as though the future was staring me in the face.

When we drive past the university where I took my first swimming lessons, I now see the place where my mother took her master’s degree in sociology. What will my future job be? My grandparents’ house, still holding Barbie dolls in the closet from when I was five, also displays my parents’ wedding pictures. Will that be me one day? The diner that I used to go with my family is now filled to the brim with girls my own age hosting and serving tables. Is this the job I could’ve had if I stayed?

I feel equally on the precipice and on the peak. I’m on the cusp of my adult years, looking over the edge of a cliff. Like so many girls before me, adulthood is coming up fast; University, taxes, and graduation are driving towards me at full speed. But freedom, knowledge, and endless opportunities come packaged with the negatives. Opposingly, I wonder if I’m at the peak of my childhood; Are my years of being worry free ending? Will I be any good at being an adult? I look at a city full of old memories, and I feel that a part of my life that has loved me so well may be coming to a close.

Is it normal to feel like I’m at my peak and on the precipice at the same time? Or would it be abnormal to feel like anything else? I took these videos to try and help myself, and you, figure it out.